La Mercé Wrap Up

Time to wrap up Barcelona's big festival and move onto other topics. It was a crazy, fun weekend, and I hope reading about it was at least a quarter as entertaining as being here. And don't worry, I will work on maintaining topic quality in my blog.

I left you guys in a rush to go see some dancing. According to the English brochure, "The sardana is a serene, popular and very sociable dance which originated in northern Catalonia." I probably would have worded it a little differently, but whatever. The dancing was held in Plaça de La Mercé:
I heard the music playing, but where was this famous dancing? It turns out, there were no performers of the Sardana, just the public. Circles would just sprout up.



I'm not kidding you. Spontaneous circles of people would just pop up. As I watched, an old man came up to me and motioned for me to join in. He attempted to talk to me in Catalan and I told him in Spanish that I don't know it. He asked if I knew Spanish, I told him I spoke very little. He then asked about English, and upon my affirmative, he explained the Sardana. Apparently it's easy for beginners, but very complicated to follow the beat if you're good.

I watched a little bit and then was pulled into a circle of other greenhorns. A guy was teaching us the movements. With your arms up, you do three steps (left, right, left) then sidestep and do three more steps (right, left, right). Arms down you kind of skip a little more, but I have a feeling this was the dumbed down version of the dance.

It was fun, and I can now say I've danced the Sardana.

As I was leaving, I ran into the old man again and this lady gave me a sticker. She then was apparently asking for a donation. Me, being rather cheap, did what I usually do: pretend I don't have any money. However, upon further pressing by this woman, I dug into my pocket and pulled out 5 cents. There, take that.

Ah, and I also went inside the church that was in the plaza. A type of service was going on. It was pretty cool to see.
Next I made my way to Montjuïc where a massive fireworks show was going to close the festival. Along the way I ran into another parade that had more of those giants, dragons, and other creatures.
And apparently the Spanish just love things with bare breasts.
Here's another picture of the place where the fireworks were going to be. The show also involved a massive fountain.
Here's the square that would soon be packed with people. People tell me 10-15,000 show up for this event. I could believe it.



Here's the fountain warming up before the event started
And I have to say, this 30 minute fireworks display was definitely on par with anything Disney does. It was nuts.
And at one point, I guess they handed out sparklers to some people and about 20 minutes into it, everyone was told to light them. Those who did not have any held up other things, including cigarettes. Oh Europeans...
Again quoting the English brochure, the fireworks show "will feature the greatest moments of rock and pop." This basically meant American music, which composed of 80% of the songs played (the remaining 20% was split between British, 15%, and Spanish, 5%).

I must say though, it was a great show. The finale was also the loudest and brightest finale I've ever seen. It basically consisted of dozens of fireworks that just went up into the air and made a loud bang with a bright, white flash.

Whew, that was a lot of work. The Internet has been sketchy lately (not working for half of yesterday) and uploading all of these photos took forever! That said, I think that pretty much wraps up La Mercé.

Today, Tuesday, it was back to class and it went well. I'm now going to go make up some flashcards or something. Gotta start learning this language officially.

Have a great day/night everyone. Oh, and feel free to post any questions on things you may be curious about or whatever.

And today's shirt of the day is brought to us by one of my amigas here:

100% Virus Free

I wonder if that shirt is a good way to pick up chicks... Hmm...